1976. I'm 22 years old, crowded into a couple of small rooms in East Oakland with a handful of other activists of color being trained to produce a new kind of radio news, mixed up with poetry and music: the KPFA Third World News Bureau. ...I'm fresh out of four years in white, white Northern New Hampshire, head spinning, heart open, learning with both hands and that's where I heard "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" and "Johannesburg." It was the soundtrack to the splicing of tape with razorblades, last minute edits of stories from then Rhodesia, from Nicaragua, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, South Africa, Ethiopia, the I-Hotel in San Francisco and a whole lot of Oakland, learning to slice into words and make them as sharp as those ten-packs of Gillettes, broadcast haiku 45 seconds at a time. May he find peace, peace, peace. May the force of what his music did in this world cradle him among the ancestors.

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About Aurora

Aurora Levins Morales is a disabled and chronically ill, community supported writer, historian, artist and activist. It takes a village to keep her blogs coming. To become part of the village it takes, donate here.

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